the transports. The hostile fleet, chiefly manned with Normans, Picards, and Genoese, moved out in three squadrons June 24, 1340 early in the morning. early in the morning. When these saw the English vessels tacking, they thought it was a flight; but they found their mistake when the seeming fugitives, having turned, bore down on them with trumpet blasts and stirring shouts. The battle began before ten in the morning; and all that midsummer day huge engines hurled crushing stones through the air. English archers replied with clouds of arrows to the whistling of the French cross-bows. Men-at-arms hewed and stabbed across the bulwarks, which were bound together with grapnels and hooked chains. The huge Christopher, retaken by the English and filled with archers, galled the Genoese severely. At last the French, stung to madness by the rain of shafts, and unable to escape with their ships by reason of the chains that bound them, began to leap into the sea. All was then soon over; and Edward sent a letter to the bishops and clergy in England, announcing his victory at Sluys-a document, it may be added, which is regarded as the first despatch among the English records proclaiming a naval victory. Philip heard the bad news from the lips of his jester, who veiled it in a joke. Then followed in the same year a siege of Tournay,* lasting eleven weeks all but three days, and ending in a truce between the armies of England and France. Had the siege gone on a few days longer, the garrison would have eaten their last crust; so the town had a narrow escape. A truce for three years brought this period of the war to a close in 1343. The murder of Von Artevelt at Ghent changed the plan of operations laid down by the English king. No longer able to depend entirely on Flanders, he resolved to strike at France in other directions. Sending, therefore, the Earl of Derby with a force to Gascony, he embarked in person at Southampton with * Tournay is now a city of Hainault in Belgium, forty-seven miles south of Ghent. It is divided by the Scheldt. a great army bound for the same southern province of the invaded land. A storm drove him to anchor on the Cornish coast for six days, during which, at the persuasion of Sir Godfrey de Harcourt, he changed his mind as to the destination of his fleet. To Normandy they were now to direct their course. Landing at La Hogue, where he cunningly interpreted a bloody nose, got in leaping from his ship, as an omen of good, he prepared for an advance upon Caen. Here the Prince of Wales, better known as the Black Prince, from the armour which he wore, first came into prominence. Having now reached the age of sixteen, he received knighthood on the sands of La Hogue, and was associated with his royal father in the command of the central battalion of the three into which the army was divided. The English army, passing from Caen to Evreux, spread its ravages almost to the suburbs of Paris, but then turned sharply off to Beauvais and to Poix-bent, it is said, on getting safely out of France. But most of the bridges of the Somme had been broken down, and the rest were strongly guarded. Philip had caught the English army in a trap from which there seemed to be no escape. Almost in despair, Edward surveyed the Somme, but could find no ford and no unguarded bridge. At this crisis he heard from a prisoner of a spot below Abbeville where the river could be passed at the ebb of the tide. Dashing in at the proper time, he led his forces over in the face of a great body of the enemy, who in vain tried to prevent the passage of the stream. Philip, in hot chase, found the water too high to follow. He had to go round by Abbeville, while the English king made his way to the forest of Crecy, where a battle must certainly be fought. Leaving Abbeville at sunrise on Saturday, August 26, 1346, Philip toiled with his soldiers on to Crecy, where the army of Edward, refreshed with food and sleep, awaited his approach. Rain and thunder then came on, and the sky grew dark. When the sun shone out at five o'clock in the afternoon, the Genoese crossbowmen advanced to the attack in a mass of fifteen thousand They were tired with their heavy march of eighteen miles. men. Aug. 26, 1346 The sun dazzled their eyes and destroyed their aim. All at once a shower of arrows began to fall on them with a force which neither shield nor armour could withstand. They fled. Vainly the superb cavalry of the Duke of Alençon strove to stem the flight. They, too, got a share of the deadly shower, and many bit the dust. But Alençon and the Count of Flanders managed to pass through the confused masses of the Genoese, and fell with fury on the foremost battalion of the English, led by the Prince of Wales. They could make no impression on the solid masses of infantry, the value of which the English had learned from the Scottish leaders Wallace and Bruce. The second battalion moved up in support of the first. The English held their ground in spite of the terrific onsets of the French cavalry. To some it seemed as if the latter were irresistible. An Englishman who fought by the prince sent for aid to the king, who stayed with the reserve by a windmill on a hill. "Is my son dead, unhorsed, or badly wounded?" asked Edward. "No, thank God," said the knight, "but he is so hotly engaged that he has great need of your help." "Return to them that sent you," replied the king, "and tell them not to expect that I shall come as long as my son has life; and say that I command them to let the boy win his spurs. The glory and honour of the day shall be given to him, and to those into whose care I have intrusted him." This reply stirred new fire in the English ranks. The French lines gave way; and the beaten king, whose gallant charges and many perils were unavailing, rode away to the castle of La Broye, and, taking horse again at midnight, entered Amiens in the gray dawn. The English never left their ground. There was no pursuit. In the tumult of this great battle a few stunning explosions may have pealed above the din with a sound of thunder to which warriors' ears were then unused. It is likely enough that some rude cannon were fired at Crecy. the first occasion on which these engines appeared in battle; If so, that was not but the bow-and-arrow was still the national weapon of the English. The siege of Calais was a natural sequel to the victory of Crecy. Edward had not long invested that celebrated port, when cheering news crossed the sea from England, telling of a great victory won over the invading Scots by his good queen Philippa, who had met them at Nevil's Cross,* had beaten them in a three hours' fight, and had taken their king David prisoner (October 17, 1346). By building a wooden town between Calais and the bridge which crossed the encircling marshes, Edward secured the comfort of his troops, while starving Vienne and the garrison into a surrender. The completeness of this barrack-town may be judged from its market-place, where meat, bread, cloth, and other necessaries were regularly sold. The whole story of this long siege, which lasted almost a year (August 31, 1346, to August 4, 1347), speaks well for the chivalry of both sides. Edward not only allowed seventeen hundred of the poorer inhabitants, who were starving, to leave the town, but he gave them their dinner and some money as they passed through his camp. By guarding the bridge over the marshes and the way along the shore-the only two means of approaching Calais with relief-he prevented the French king from doing anything to save the place. At last hunger did its work. Six citizens, nobly devoting themselves to save the rest, came out with ropes round their necks to deliver up the keys. The executioner was preparing to take the lives of these brave men, when the entreaties of Queen Philippa won their release from the melted heart of her husband. A truce for two years being then agreed to, Edward and his wife went home. No pestilence that ever smote Europe has surpassed in horror and destructiveness the Black Plague, which swept from the filthy lanes of Asia in 1348 and fell in the following year on * Nevil's Cross. The scene of this battle is marked by a stone cross set up about a mile west of Durham. |